


but i left my body outside

by backofthefront



Series: so save that heart for me [1]
Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: Canon Compliant, Heavy Drinking, M/M, Mutual Pining, Pining, i use both hockey nicknames and real names interchangeably, this is all over the place with tenses
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-20
Updated: 2017-08-20
Packaged: 2018-12-17 22:46:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,982
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11861202
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/backofthefront/pseuds/backofthefront
Summary: Sometimes he feels like his whole life, he’s watching from inside the penalty box.





	but i left my body outside

**Author's Note:**

> Title is from ‘let me in’ by snowmine. Prequel to ‘stained glass variation of the truth.’

Jeff thinks the chandelier is the color of Kent’s eyes. 

 

Kent’s eyes change color, of course. Jeff mentioned it in passing once, after a few Long Island iced teas, and the guys chirped him relentlessly. A nonchalant toss of the shoulder and a swig of water, ducking to hide the blush in his cheeks, and Jeff never mentioned it again. Didn’t need the questions about why he was so focused on staring into Parser’s eyes. 

 

It’s not like he was, really. It wasn’t creepy. He just noticed. He couldn’t help noticing.

Jeff had always been observant by nature. 

He was doubly so when it came to Kent. 

 

So Jeff kept it tucked to the breast, but he swore Kent’s eyes changed color. They were like black ice, almost an indigo. He couldn’t quite capture the color; it grew more indescribable with every alcoholic beverage one of the two of them consumed. The number was steadily climbing, and the glint in Kent’s eye kept sharpening. Somewhere, Jeff wouldn’t be surprised if he could hear a blade scrape against a stone. 

 

The chandelier in the club was gaudy, in Jeff’s opinion. Surely the crystals were fake. It was massive, hanging tentatively on a rail-chain from the ceiling, and the rocks, somehow black and translucent simultaneously, bounced reflected light off all the club patrons in their shiny attire. A Rolex gleamed on a man pressed up against a woman in a silver sequined dress; she threw light all around the room with the rhythmic swivels of her hips. 

 

Kent’s Aviators sparkled from their perch on top of his head. He had a strawberry margarita in his hand, now. Jeff supposed it was better than the vodka Kent had been drinking earlier- bottom shelf, but lots of it, strong, no chasers. Not his usual stuff; Kent was a mixed drinks kind of guy. Jeff could see the appeal, but he’d just stick with his light beer. The occasional whiskey. (Kent had laughed at that, once, when they’d gone out together, one of the first few times, and Jeff had turned down the offer of some punch-vodka drink, holding his beer by way of an explanation. “Dude, why do you hate yourself?” Kent had asked, three sheets to the wind and hanging all over his arm. Jeff had shrugged with the other arm, the one holding the beer, thinking the same thing.) 

 

There is something almost feral about the way Kent is dancing. Swoops can’t put his finger on it. No, that’s not right. He has his finger right on the pulse of it, feeling the blood rush in the throat of the moment, but it’s something he can’t put into words. If he were a more spiritual man, maybe, he’d chalk it up to an aura, but he’s not, so he doesn’t. 

 

Something erratic about the movements of his body, the curve of his spine twisted in on himself as he draws every eye in the room. He hasn’t spilled a single icy drop of the margarita, despite not ten minutes ago pounding vodka shots like it was his last night on earth. He was a man drinking to forget, Swoops could see. But the performance he was putting on? That was of a man who wanted, needed, desperately, to be remembered. 

 

Jeff is torn between two halves of himself. He can’t decide whether to drink more, faster, go par for par with Kent, drink until neither of them can remember anything, drink until he passes out. On the other hand, there’s something shaking in Kent’s posture; there is a nervousness in his shoulders. Kent has hat hair despite his hair not seeing the inside of any headgear in the past few hours. Jeff wants to smooth down his cowlicks. He wants to give him a glass of water, ice crushed into obnoxious little shrapnel pieces like he liked. 

 

Jeff’s beer was sour on his lips. 

 

Feeling like a perversion of Hemingway, Jeff nursed a whiskey for the rest of the night, finding a seat at a stool at the bar and taking in the view. He feels like he’s straddling the lines of every conversation in this room; he is omnipotent. He feels like he can read minds. There’s one he can’t quite penetrate, though. It’s the only one he even cares about. 

 

Kent dances like nobody's watching, because he revels in this attention, because they’re all looking at him but he doesn’t have to explain anything. Because everybody’s watching, but nobody is seeing. 

 

Jeff stops trying to block out the thoughts where his daydream-self licks the sweat off the dip of Kent’s hipbone, where Jeff’s hands bracket Kent’s thighs and he can lunge up to kiss Kent, Jeff’s body blocking out everything else until he obscures everything from Kent’s view, including whatever is making him sad. Or whatever negative emotion he’s feeling, ever. 

 

Jeff gives up on the alcohol and orders water. It tastes wrong in his mouth, heavy with fluoride. 

 

Jeff wakes up in the morning on Kent’s couch, after steering him into bed at some ungodly wee hour. Jeff remembers exactly how they both got there. He remembers everything. 

 

Kent stumbles out a couple hours later, greeted with lukewarm coffee and half a pizza. Jeff had never been a big believer in salty, greasy hangover food, but it was one of the only things in Kent’s freezer, and, well. Jeff’s stomach was already sitting like it was tied up in queasy knots. When Kent saw the pizza, this little thing Swoops had done, for a fraction of a second he beamed with delight. He goes right back to looking like shit, though. The bags under his eyes indicate more than just a night of heavy drinking, and there’s something pale about his chest. He hadn’t bothered to put on a shirt. Jeff pointedly does not look at the way Kent’s sweats are slung low on his hips, and Kent pointedly does not look at Jeff. 

 

Jeff wonders who’s finding their solace in this. 

\--------------

 

Jeff had never been much of a fighter. He was tall, though, and had shot up earlier than any of his classmates. The streets he’d grown up playing ball hockey on in the summer had left him with a mean right hook and the burning in his gut to protect people like Kent Parson. 

Jeff had never learned not to fight other people’s battles. 

 

They’re up two points against the Falconers when he checks Alexei Mashkov into the boards. It was illegal, and it put Jeff in the box, but Mashkov hadn’t sent Kent flying, and they were up another point before Jeff was back on the ice. 

 

The guys chirp him for it, after, when they’ve won and adrenaline is coloring their cheeks a pleasant red. Jeff goes through the usual motions of a laugh, shrug, comment how Parser is so tiny.

 

Sometimes he feels like his whole life, he’s watching from inside the penalty box. 

 

Kent doesn’t say anything about it, after. He’s a man of few words where it counts. There’s a softness, though, around the edges of his eyes when he smiles at Jeff, a different smile than the rest of the team is awarded with. 

 

Kent’s eyes burn green when they win. Jeff swears they turn to cerulean when Kent looks at him, later in the locker room. Dimmed, but inexplicably clearer.

\--------------

 

The first time Kent climbs into his bed is a roadie in Seattle. 

 

The rain was pouring down, torrential, Biblical- that was to be expected, of course, in Seattle, but that didn’t mean Jeff had to like it, after being coddled by the clear and expansive Vegas skies- and Kent was tossing and turning in the bed next to him, tangled in sheets, clutching a pillow to his chest like it was a life raft and he a drowning man. Jeff couldn’t sleep.

 

It wasn’t the first time any particular thing in that scenario had happened, so maybe it was the combination of them that propelled Jeff, like a man possessed, to speak. 

 

It was the third time Kent jolted awake, pushing the pillow off him as if to avoid an assault. Swoops couldn’t watch him grit his teeth, turn over, pretend to sleep until the clutches of his REM cycle finally caught up to him again. It wasn’t like Jeff wasn’t lying there awake too. 

 

“Parse,” he said, his tone reminiscent of footsteps in soft sand. 

 

Jeff could feel Kent tense up in the bed over, could imagine him squeezing his eyes shut, muscles frozen in fear, in shame. 

 

“Parser,” he said again, softer. 

 

Kent heaved a sigh, like he was giving up. “I’m sorry I woke you up.” 

 

Jeff started to shake his head before realizing that it was pretty much too dark for Kent to see him. “I was already awake. Can’t sleep.” He paused, then bit the bullet. “You’re not okay.” 

 

He could hear Kent’s breathing still. Jeff hadn’t fed him a question; there was no way to dart around the statement without lying. Kent didn’t lie, not to Jeff. 

 

“M’not,” he said. Jeff chuckled. “I know.” 

 

Jeff sat up. “This is like… the third time, man. I’m here if you want to tell me about it. But you don’t have to.” 

 

Kent huffed a breath that might have been a laugh, a cry, a thank you, or an I’m sorry, and sat up, pushing the duvet off himself, swinging his pale feet out of bed. The moon shone through the open curtains, caught his skin, illuminating the bags under his eyes and the iridescence to his complexion. It was equal parts, to Swoops, enchanting, and haunting, unhealthy. 

The moon, and streetlamps, probably, backlit the splattering raindrops, causing little black shadows to flit over Kent’s skin as he stood and approached Jeff’s bed. 

“Not right now. Maybe some other time?” His voice was so small as he pushed back Jeff’s duvet, and Jeff scooted over, making room. When Kent fixed himself under the covers, Jeff put his arms around him like he could hold him together with the force of his own will. 

 

In the morning, they woke up pressed against each other. That morning, Swoops woke up first- not unusual- and had the thought that Kent’s sleeping face, untamable golden hair like a halo on the pillow around him, and cheeks fuller and pinker than he had ever seen them, should be in a gilded frame in a museum somewhere, a work of art unlike any other. Jeff knew his eyes, under the lids, in that moment, were a crisp, clean blue. 

Kent’s lips were pink and full, slightly parted. Jeff wanted to kiss him, cast them in a scene, capture the subtle curves in a painting and hang it in the Met. He didn’t banish the thought immediately, instead letting it linger. Harmless, since he couldn’t have the real thing. 

 

The rain had stopped sometime in the night, and when Jeff pulled back the curtains the street below was done up in that half-wet sort of sepia, the kind of look where when you saw it, you knew the accompanying smell would be let wet grass, fresh earth, and a promise. 

 

Kent woke up, thirty or so minutes later, and laughed and rubbed the sleep from his eyes. Padded over to his sweatpants strewn in the corner, pulled them on. 

 

They sat next to each other at team breakfast, like always, knees knocking together, thighs pressed too, touching hands and shoulders, exchanging requests to pass the jam. They didn’t talk about it. 

 

\--------------

 

Jeff had seen the rumors, mostly from suspect online blogs, about Zimmermann and Kent in the Q. The general consensus, unspoken and agreed upon, was that it was all bullshit. Riding in the passenger seat of Kent’s car on the way home from practice, his phone pinged with a news alert about Zimmermann. Kent threw his head back, laughing, at some bit on talk radio that Jeff hadn’t listened to. His eyes are bright blue the Nevada sky on a clear summer day, and Jeff tucks his phone away and laughs along to a joke where he doesn’t know the setup or the punch line. 

He doesn’t ask about Zimmermann. 

\--------------

 

The Aeros’ defense had been a menace, and the Aces couldn’t lay claim to the Zimmermann-Parson no-look one-timer, and they might have been lacking some of the pure physicality, the burl found on some other teams. But people underestimated the Aces. Underestimated guys like Swoops, guys with no seemingly inhuman outstanding capabilities to boast of, just a bunch of guys with hard heads, harder helmets, and soft hearts. Kent, too- he was the best of them. They all wanted a Cup, and Kent wanted it the most.

They scraped a win against the Schooners. It clinched their playoff spot, and Swoops could hardly process the words as he thought them. They would make it to the playoffs. Swoops didn’t say anything; he didn’t want to jinx it, and he wasn’t even superstitious like that. He could feel the thrum of it, the pull of potential victory, in his marrow. 

 

He smiled at Kent. Headed toward the locker room; Kent, captainly as ever, was handling the throng of press. When he smiled back, Swoops swore for a second that silver shone in his eyes. 

 

He thought he could get used to this; he could get used to having things that he wanted.

 

\--------------

 

It’s not until the fourth time Kent climbs into his bed that he actually asks if it’s okay. 

 

“You wanna watch a movie or something?” he asks, all casual, like Jeff doesn't hang off of every word he says. Jeff hums a yes, grabbing the remote and flipping through the channels absent-mindedly. There was never anything good on in hotels, but maybe they could get something on pay-per-view.

 

Kent was in a pair of flannel pajama pants, the kinds that kids wore when they were waking up eagerly on Christmas morning, and no shirt. It struck Jeff how small he was, in comparison. Not weak, if the sharp lines of his abs and the lean muscle of his bicep had anything to say about it, but small, still. 

 

“Mind if I…” Kent trailed off, the question asking itself; he already had swung one leg onto the bed. 

 

“Course.” At that, Kent grins, a thousand watts, and snatches away the remote. Swoops doesn’t recall what they watch, really, but he remembers the moment. Yeah, he remembers that. 

 

Kent leans into his side, a runaway piece of hair tickling Jeff’s neck. Jeff is still, the frozen kind. Kent’s is similar, but has more of a serene quality. Jeff wishes the pillows they’re leaning on would swallow him up. He wishes he could keep this moment in a bubble, a snow globe, dwell in it forever. To live in a time capsule of “maybe.” 

When Kent falls asleep, wrapped around him, he thinks,  _ maybe.  _

 

For days after, flashes of memory come unbidden to him. The press of Kent’s firm thigh, his unadulterated joy, the way his eyes shone, wide and hazel in the light of the television. The way he had leaned forward, closer, head bent towards Swoops. Eyes on lips. If it were a movie, he would swear the leads had been about to kiss. It wasn’t a movie. It wasn’t. There weren’t any happy endings, any sad ones. There weren’t even any endings. Sometimes there weren’t even beginnings. 

  
  


\--------------

 

There is something off about Kent after they win the cup. 

His eyes are widened, scanning, like he’s searching for something. But they’re also glazed-over, distant. Scanning a memory, then. Looking for something that isn’t there. (And oh, Swoops can relate.) 

 

Swoops doesn’t pretend to know what’s going on in Kent’s head. He’s not sure he could, even if he tried. For once, Jeff was preoccupied with his own state of mind, the influx of adrenaline, pride, euphoria. When he lifts the cup, the metal is so cold it burns his fingers. It is both heavier and lighter than he’d expected. 

 

Kent acts like a deer in the body of a wolf- or maybe Jeff has that backwards, but it’s something both flighty and feral, vicious and victim. An addict who thought they had gotten their fix; turns out it was the wrong kind of drug. Halfway through the celebratory post-game drinks, he disappears. Jeff is ashamed, looking back, that he hadn’t questioned it. It had felt almost inevitable. 

 

When Kent returns to the hotel room at nearly dawn, looking shell-shocked, apparently having no more tears left to cry, and not making any effort to excuse himself or be quiet? Well, that felt inevitable too. 

 

Jeff hadn’t spoken. At least, not anything important. He was cloaked in a sleep-haze, still drunk, and he followed Kent, who hadn’t bothered to close the door, into the bathroom. 

 

Kent was kneeling in front of the toilet, dry-heaving, though Swoops didn’t recall Kent having a single drink that night. All the same, he dropped to his knees beside his best friend and, since he didn’t have any hair to hold back, concentrated on rubbing small, soothing circles into Kent’s back. 

 

Jeff had never believed in fate. He also didn’t believe in feeling sorry for yourself, or other people, or making mistakes. There was only one way, and that was forward. So, when Kent caught his breath, wiped off his mouth with the back of his hand, Jeff pulled his away from stroking Kent’s hair. 

 

This one, he knew, they would have to talk about. When he said as much, and Kent raised his head to meet Jeff’s eyes, Jeff found himself staring into twin pools of tired brown, and he knew he would mostly be listening. 

 

Well, then. He stood, and Kent followed his example. It looked like they had a lot to talk about. They had better get started. 

**Author's Note:**

> wrote this after stained glass to give a little taste of swoops' pining/backstory. i have such extensive headcanon relationship development for these two. anyway, pictured "offscreen" is kent spilling his guts abt the thing he had with zimms and his shenanigans at the kegster. neither of them admit their feelings for the other (partially bc at this point kent doesn't realize he has any). oh, poor long-suffering jeff.


End file.
